AMD's Athlon XP 1900+ (1.6GHz): Still #1

The Numbers Continue

The Athlon XP 1900+ is no different from the 1.33GHz - 1.53GHz CPUs that were launched in October other than an obvious boost to its clock speed. The processor now carries a fixed multiplier of 12.0x which is adjustable if you have the patience to connect the L1 bridges on the CPU and a motherboard that supports multiplier adjustment.

Because of the new organic packaging the two points that need to be connected on each "bridge" are separated by an actual indentation in the package; this indentation must be filled with a nonconductive material (for example, quick drying epoxy) before the connection between the two points on the bridge can be made.

Athlon MP processors don't suffer this fate as their L1 bridges aren't completed but they aren't scored either. Unfortunately purchasing an Athlon MP processor instead of an XP model, although they are physically and architecturally the same, isn't too viable considering MP processors carry about a 30% premium over their desktop counterparts.

1) Full support for Intel's SSE instructions
2) An improved hardware data prefetch mechanism
3) Enhancements to the Athlon's Translation Look-aside Buffers
4) Lower power consumption & on-die thermal diode